1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to semicylindrical saddles mounted on rotary printing drums to facilitate mounting thereon of flexible printing plates.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the present day popularity of rotary printing presses employing semicylindrical shells mounted thereon for receipt of printing plates, numerous arrangements have been proposed for conveniently securing such printing plates to the saddles. One such arrangement employs a locking ball arrangement which is operative upon depression of the biasing bar to automatically lock it in its recessed position and may conveniently be released by merely depressing a plunger in the ball lock mechanism. An arrangement of this type is shown in my U.S. Pat. No. 3,943,852. Such devices suffer the shortcoming that relatively precise machining is required to form the ball lock mechanisms and painstaking efforts are required for installation and assembly thereof.
Other lockup arrangements have been proposed for printing saddles, including the provision of rotary grippers disposed along one side thereof and biased to a gripping position. An arrangement of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,727,551. Such devices also suffer the shortcoming that construction and assembly thereof is relatively sophisticated and expensive.